The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Darqref

The memory on my sound devices hate me.

On two separate sound systems, one on a component stereo system in my house, the other in my car, both have a memory system that is supposed to remember the radio stations that I set. Depending on time, feeling, and purpose, I may choose to listen to one of several different radio broadcast stations. I keep them in the memory slots, so I can easily change between them. Most of the time, I use three stations, one the largest local NPR affiliate, one a classical music station, and one a local news radio for when I need traffic fastest.

When power goes out (or a system unplugged, or the car battery dead or disconnected), there is supposed to be a local battery that holds the station presets. Invariably, instead, only two the the three are recalled - I have to manually re-set one of the stations. It mystifies me, since storing two of the three means some sort of memory was working, but it NEVER stores that third station.

It's hit me a couple of time this week, because I was painting and needed to unplug the stereo.....

I have a bedside radio with similar behaviour. In my case it gets befuddled betwixt Classical and Grandstand (Sport). If I press the button for one I often get the other but then again I might not. Solution is to 'reboot', select another preset, and then try Classical or Grandstand again, and sometimes again and again. It's annoying, but not enough to make me want to shell out for a replacement.

BR

[Dopedangel]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

Ok, I was afraid of that, so Office it is (the same than Access).

I would recommend trying it yourself as it is free to use so does not cost anything but some time. The biggest barrier for me is not that it can't meet all my requirements but rather I am used to doing stuff in a particular way. So relearning some stuff takes time and I am a bit set in my ways. If I made my sheets from scratch I probably would not have problem with using sheets but as I am converting it has a few hiccups.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Dopedangel

I would recommend trying it yourself as it is free to use so does not cost anything but some time. The biggest barrier for me is not that it can't meet all my requirements but rather I am used to doing stuff in a particular way. So relearning some stuff takes time and I am a bit set in my ways. If I made my sheets from scratch I probably would not have problem with using sheets but as I am converting it has a few hiccups.

Taking into account that some weeks ago I have to google how to search a text in all the sheets in a file... I'm not so sure it can meet my expectations but I'll check, thank you.

[tempest@de]

I used google sheets and it works fine but I kept adding data and formulas and it started to slow down and when I added graphs I had to forget it. I now store the file on box and when I need it I open it with excel online and work on the web. When I have a lot of work to do on the file I sometimes download it and after I upload it again. I’ve been working like this for more than a year and I’m now experiencing some problems, but I think it is due to the new formulas that I added last week that I later found where incorrect. I just uploaded the new version and so far it is working, I hope it stays that way.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

What's the host platform? If you're on Windows, Excel will likely behave better. You might also look into Gnumeric as a different open source solution. (And if you are on Windows, what does Task Manager think is going on when Libre is frozen?)

I know people who prefer open source but use Excel because Libre Calc just falls over trying to run macros imported from Excel. If you are someone who lives in spreadsheets, Libre may be painful if you are doing sophisticated stuff.

How much number crunching are you doing? Keeping records to manage diabetes sounds like table management more than calculation, and something else might be a better tool. (There are several open source diabetes management tools designed to interface with things like insulin pumps to record usage, but that sounds like something not applicable to your requirements.)

How often do you use LO Calc during the day to record this data? It might help if you didn't leave it running minimized, and simply invoked it when needed.
______
Dennis

I use Windows 7 Home Edition. I just plug the numbers into a given column to record what they were. Hadn't considered Excell. I take 4 shots a day, no insulin pump. I have left it running in the background more for convenience than anything else.

[badgoodDeb]

On my work Mac, I log out every day, to make sure memory gets refreshed and released. I've had enough issues, that I also reboot every Friday when I log out.

It might help to just quit the program and restart it, once a week at least.

edit: or this might be superstition on my part!

[Blossom]

For Windows there is a program called CleanMem that will refresh memory using task scheduler. I use it. It's free and works well. It pokes windows to release memory not in use. It's how I fixed Cortana.

Sent from my XT1528

[cc_in_oh]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

On my work Mac, I log out every day, to make sure memory gets refreshed and released. I've had enough issues, that I also reboot every Friday when I log out.

It might help to just quit the program and restart it, once a week at least.

edit: or this might be superstition on my part!

We have a roomful of PC stuff so we shut everything down at night to let the room cool down. Win10 boots so much faster that it's nowhere near the hassle it used to be.

Norton likes fairly frequent restarts anyway to keep things cleaned up...

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Blossom

For Windows there is a program called CleanMem that will refresh memory using task scheduler. I use it. It's free and works well. It pokes windows to release memory not in use. It's how I fixed Cortana.

I have 8GB RAM on the desktop, expandable to 32GB, but I seldom see more than a quarter of it used.

What I do find useful on occasion is logging out and logging back in again. It terminates stuff specific to the current user login and frees the associated resources, and starts fresh when I log back in.
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by cc_in_oh

We have a roomful of PC stuff so we shut everything down at night to let the room cool down. Win10 boots so much faster that it's nowhere near the hassle it used to be.

Win10 Pro here boots off an SSD, so reboots are a lot less painful than they used to be. Takes under a minute to boot to a Win10 desktop.

Norton likes fairly frequent restarts anyway to keep things cleaned up...

I don't run Norton, so I'm spared that issue.
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by crich70

I use Windows 7 Home Edition. I just plug the numbers into a given column to record what they were. Hadn't considered Excell. I take 4 shots a day, no insulin pump. I have left it running in the background more for convenience than anything else.

If it's hanging when left running in the background for long periods, the first thing to try is not leaving it up continuously. Invoke it when you need to fill in numbers, and close it down one you have.
______
Dennis

[Blossom]

Okay what are your guys thoughts on Windows 10 1803 I've been reading huge issues on blogs and tech news. My laptop is finally running stable on 1709. I think I'll hide the update as right now I'm in mourning so the last thing I need is dealing with computer woes.

Sent from my XT1528

[BetterRed]

@Blossom - My advice (irrespective of your recent loss and related problems): assuming you've got Pro and there is nothing in latest release you really, really need, set Branch Readiness to Semi-Annual Channel and defer for 60 days thereafter, viz:



With those settings I didn't get moved to 1709 until April 19 2018 - 7 months.

Let those who have nothing better to do with their time provide MS with a free beta testing service. In times past it was selected corporate customers who did the beta testing for MS - in expectation of better support. Now the consumer hoi-polloi do it for the kudos alone

Commiserations of the loss of your sister. I lost a sister when we were kids. Didn't mean much to me then, but now I often reflect on what might have been. Take courage from the fact that you had her for so long. �� (this was a hug emoji)

BR

[Adoby]

So I updated to Ubuntu 18.04.

Ubuntu dropped Unity as the default interface in favour of Gnome. Fine, I'll try it...

I had the laptop on the top of my lap and it seems that Gnome got some info about orientation and flipped the screen and the touchpad 180 degrees. If i tilted the laptop the screen flipped back, but the touchpad stayed upside down. And the touchpad had gotten insensitive. No more soft taps, now I had to PRESS until the touchpad "clicked". I worried it would break.

I rebooted from a USB-stick with 16.04 of Ubuntu and googled to figure out what was going on. got some clues. "Touchpad synaptics".

With intense concentration I rebooted the new install and managed to install touchpad synaptics using an upside down touchpad. Then I installed the community supported version of Unity and touchpad and screen settled down as supposed. Sigh!

But the VPN app didn't work. What to do...

I mailed support and they couldn't help. But they promised to notify the techies.

I ended up reinstalling 16.04 and running that way for a few days.

I installed Ubuntu 18.04 on my desktop instead. No real need for VPN there. And when installing on a desktop with a normal mouse the screen and mouse orientation stayed put.

But I had gotten used to how Unity was really frugal with vertical space. Reusing the titlebar for menus. Gnome had some shell extensions that promised to do the same, but I never got it to work. So I installed the community version of Unity on the desktop as well. And finally took the effort to attach to the NAS using autofs. The man-pages described one thing, I saw another. Some experimenting and I got it working. Bliss!

Then I heard back from the VPN-support. They wanted to know how I felt about how the incident was handled. I said that the staff seemed to do what they could, but the product didn't support the updated Ubuntu.

After a day the VPN-support came back and wanted me to test a new version of the VPN software. I tested it on the desktop and it worked fine!

So back to reinstalling the laptop. Upside down screen and touchpad again, but now I knew how to fix it. No need for research. And in with old unity again. And autofs to my NAS as well! Great!

After that everything seems to work fine. Latest calibre and all bookmarks and addons on firefox came back from sync.

So now I have updated both my laptop and my desktop to latest version of Ubuntu LTS and everything looks and works exactly as it did when I started... Oh, well...

(Autofs is new (for me) and works real nice!!!)

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Okay what are your guys thoughts on Windows 10 1803 I've been reading huge issues on blogs and tech news. My laptop is finally running stable on 1709. I think I'll hide the update as right now I'm in mourning so the last thing I need is dealing with computer woes.

Sent from my XT1528

I will tell you in a couple of weeks. I updated last weekend and no problem till this moment.